Food in filthy containers and flies landing on food at a Miami restaurant
Flies on food, and violations of basic restaurant cleanliness and food safety shut down a Miami Gardens restaurant and nightclub after a state inspection last week.
The inspector wasn’t the first person to see problems at The Villa Night Club, 19501 NW Second Ave. A complaint led to an Oct. 13 visit from the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation that turned up 25 total violations and seven High Priority violations.
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The Villa passed re-inspection on Oct. 14 to get back in business.
The inspector saw the back kitchen door open, exposing the kitchen to flies.
And the flies came into the kitchen like a festival of football pregame flyovers: “Approximately five-plus live flies landed on raw chicken in the preparation sink and cut cow foot;” “approximately 20-plus live flies flying and landing on jerk sauce, at the juice preparation area and on top of oxtails storage containers;” “approximately 10-plus live flies flying in the storage room.”
Stop Sales sent the raw chicken, cut cow foot and jerk sauce into the garbage.
“Jerk sauce, oxtails, goat and pig foot were stored in soiled containers.”
“Cow foot and oxtails were stored on the floor in the kitchen ... jerk sauce and goat were stored on the floor in the walk-in cooler.”
That’s a violation anyway, but especially egregious when the floor was “covered with standing water throughout the kitchen, walk-in cooler and walk-in freezer.”
Two roaches died on the floor of a storage room in the kitchen. Their bodies hadn’t been swept up yet.
The “soiled shopping cart inside the kitchen with a frozen cow foot on top” counted only as a “food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime.” That’s also an unsafe method of thawing food.
Speaking of unsafe, the walk-in cooler that’s supposed to keep food in cold storage at or under 41 degrees measured 65 degrees. That explains the salt fish measuring 64 degrees after spending the night in the walk-in, a measurement that counts as “temperature abuse” and got a Stop Sale dropped on the salt fish.
An employee “touched meat boxes outside to discard, came back inside the kitchen to wash his hands with the gloves on.” Proper handwashing would’ve been to remove the gloves, throw them away, wash hands and don a new pair of single-use gloves.
The “hot water valve on the kitchen handwashing sink was shut off.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2025 at 11:24 AM.
